It was just so frustrating that someone who made her so damn happy was the very man she wasn’t supposed to be with according to the boss. They loved each other. They’d even said it out loud. Once you did that, you were supposed to get to walk around making everyone else sick with the gushy looks on your faces and by the way you spent every living breathing minute together.
You weren’t supposed to be apart on a day meant for family.
Now sitting here alone and listening to her mother describe all the things she was missing in life was the last thing on earth she needed. Doubts were plaguing her from every direction and she didn’t like the feeling at all.
“But you’re denying yourself so much, sweetheart. I mean, you haven’t even had a boyfriend in several years. Think of all you’re missing.”
Wanting to bring a halt to the conversation, Kendall hit on a perfect way to appall her mother, especially since every adult family member was seated around the table. “Don’t worry, I’m still having sex. I don’t need a boyfriend to do that.”
Her brother-in-law guffawed. Her father set his fork down with a clank. Her sisters both looked amused.
And her mother looked like horns had shot out of Kendall’s head. “Kendall! Good Lord, I can’t believe you said that in front of the baby.”
Little Jocelyn was six months old and didn’t even know where her nose was. Kendall doubted she was being potentially scarred or morally compromised.
“Well, I wouldn’t have to if you would just give it a rest.” For some reason, Kendall actually felt her lip starting to tremble. Dear Lord, she was going to cry. She hadn’t cried since she didn’t know when. Maybe since she and Evan had broken up ten years ago. “Can’t you just respect my choices? Can’t you be happy that I’m happy? Can’t you just be proud of me instead of disappointed and embarrassed?”
There was a lengthy pause as everyone stared at her in shock.
Kendall swallowed hard, fighting emotion.
Her father frowned. “No one is embarrassed of you. Of course we’re proud of you. We just never expected you’d be successful as a driver.”
Carefully handing her niece to her sister, Kendall tossed her napkin on the table. “I don’t know what’s worse—the fact that Mom has always thought I was a gender-challenged nut job, or that you encouraged me to race cars, and then when I got serious and thought I could do it, you acted like I was insane. You gave me this dream, and then you took it away.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Her father just stared at her, his ruddy complexion growing redder as anger started to mingle with his confusion. “I always encouraged you to drive, even when I thought it was a dead end. And I have to say you’re sounding pretty damn ungrateful, young lady. We worked hard to have the money for you to indulge your obsession with cars when you were a kid.”
For which in return Kendall had grown up, made a living out of that obsession, and paid off her parents’ mortgage and bought her father a sixty-thousand-dollar car.
Feeling slapped, she stood up. “Never mind. I apologize for ruining dinner.”
“Where are you going?” her mother asked as she walked away from the table.
Kendall picked her purse up off the credenza, resisting the urge to shake it at her mother as proof of her femininity.
“I’m going to see my boyfriend. He digs me just the way I am.”
“I’M not mad at you, you know,” Eve told Evan begrudgingly as they poured coffee into mugs at the breakfast bar after dinner.
Evan paused mid-pour. “Are you serious?”
“Nah. I get it. And the truth is, you and I don’t work well together.”
He couldn’t have been more shocked at her reasonable tone. “Who are you and where is my sister?”
Eve laughed, dumping a boatload of creamer into her coffee. “Shut up. But hey, it’s true. We butt heads too much to be productive and of use to each other. I hope you can find someone who you see eye to eye with.”
“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” Evan just held his coffee and stared at his sister for a second, totally caught off guard. But in a good way. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”
“You were right, you know. I do resent the fact that I didn’t have the guts to go for it, be a driver myself.”
What did he say to that? It wasn’t fair that Eve hadn’t been given the same support and encouragement as he and Elec had. “You still could, you know.”
But Eve just shrugged. “I’m too old now. It is what it is.”
Now he really felt like shit for firing her. “Look, I’m sorry for springing that on you the way I did. I should have been more tactful and discussed the fact that we were having problems with you sooner.”
“When have you and I ever discussed anything? We’d have just ended up screaming at each other.”
He laughed. “True. But I’m glad we’re cool. We have to be relatives forever.”
“Exactly. Someday our kids are going to play with each other, right?”
Never had he heard Eve mention the desire to have children. Apparently it was a hell of a day for revelations. “Yeah, in about twenty years.”
“That’s the bitch about it . . . you really can wait twenty years since there’s no expiration date on sperm. My eggs will be dried up by then if I wait.”
Evan could only handle so much revelation and contemplation in one day. “Jesus, I don’t want to talk about your eggs.” He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw it was a text from Kendall asking where he was.
That connection, that simple contact from her, immediately made him happy. God, he wanted to see her, be with her. All the time.
He quickly answered that he was at Elec and Tamara’s, hoping she was going to suggest they meet up later.
When he looked back up at his sister, she was grinning at him. “I know who that was from. It’s amazing, it’s like your whole face just sorts of melts in ecstasy.”
Evan frowned. She made him sound like a marshmallow. “I’m just squinting to read the screen in the sunlight.”
“Uh, the sun has set already. Please. Just try and deny it was from Kendall.”
His phone vibrated in his hand. He shouldn’t read it, not with Eve watching him, gloating. But he couldn’t resist. He wanted to know what Kendall had to say.
Can I come over there? Or can you meet me somewhere?